Bimorphisms and synchronous grammars

We tend to think of the study of language as proceeding by characterizing the strings and structures of a language, and we think of natural language processing as using those structures to build systems of utility in manipulating the language. But many language-related problems are more fruitfully v...

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Main Author: Stuart M. Shieber
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Institute of Computer Science, Polish Academy of Sciences 2014-07-01
Series:Journal of Language Modelling
Subjects:
Online Access:https://jlm.ipipan.waw.pl/index.php/JLM/article/view/84
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author Stuart M. Shieber
author_facet Stuart M. Shieber
author_sort Stuart M. Shieber
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description We tend to think of the study of language as proceeding by characterizing the strings and structures of a language, and we think of natural language processing as using those structures to build systems of utility in manipulating the language. But many language-related problems are more fruitfully viewed as requiring the specification of a relation between two languages, rather than the specification of a single language. We provide a synthesis and extension of work that unifies two approaches to such language relations: the automata-theoretic approach based on tree transducers that transform trees to their counterparts in the relation, and the grammatical approach based on synchronous grammars that derive pairs of trees in the relation. In particular, we characterize synchronous tree-substitution grammars and synchronous tree-adjoining grammars in terms of bimorphisms, which have previously been used to characterize tree transducers. In the process, we provide new approaches to formalizing the various concepts: a metanotation for describing varieties of tree automata and transducers in equational terms; a rigorous formalization of tree-adjoining and tree-substitution grammars and their synchronous counterparts, using trees over ranked alphabets; and generalizations of tree-adjoining grammar allowing multiple adjunction.
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spelling doaj.art-8c1dc9bd482e455b9156bfb0bcf2ed372022-12-21T23:59:29ZengInstitute of Computer Science, Polish Academy of SciencesJournal of Language Modelling2299-856X2299-84702014-07-012110.15398/jlm.v2i1.8425Bimorphisms and synchronous grammarsStuart M. Shieber0Harvard UniversityWe tend to think of the study of language as proceeding by characterizing the strings and structures of a language, and we think of natural language processing as using those structures to build systems of utility in manipulating the language. But many language-related problems are more fruitfully viewed as requiring the specification of a relation between two languages, rather than the specification of a single language. We provide a synthesis and extension of work that unifies two approaches to such language relations: the automata-theoretic approach based on tree transducers that transform trees to their counterparts in the relation, and the grammatical approach based on synchronous grammars that derive pairs of trees in the relation. In particular, we characterize synchronous tree-substitution grammars and synchronous tree-adjoining grammars in terms of bimorphisms, which have previously been used to characterize tree transducers. In the process, we provide new approaches to formalizing the various concepts: a metanotation for describing varieties of tree automata and transducers in equational terms; a rigorous formalization of tree-adjoining and tree-substitution grammars and their synchronous counterparts, using trees over ranked alphabets; and generalizations of tree-adjoining grammar allowing multiple adjunction.https://jlm.ipipan.waw.pl/index.php/JLM/article/view/84synchronous grammarstree transducerstree-adjoining grammartree-substitution grammar
spellingShingle Stuart M. Shieber
Bimorphisms and synchronous grammars
Journal of Language Modelling
synchronous grammars
tree transducers
tree-adjoining grammar
tree-substitution grammar
title Bimorphisms and synchronous grammars
title_full Bimorphisms and synchronous grammars
title_fullStr Bimorphisms and synchronous grammars
title_full_unstemmed Bimorphisms and synchronous grammars
title_short Bimorphisms and synchronous grammars
title_sort bimorphisms and synchronous grammars
topic synchronous grammars
tree transducers
tree-adjoining grammar
tree-substitution grammar
url https://jlm.ipipan.waw.pl/index.php/JLM/article/view/84
work_keys_str_mv AT stuartmshieber bimorphismsandsynchronousgrammars